Five Cases Shawn Spencer Never Solved
by Tani-san
Summary: “For it is a glorious time of year. The time,” he pauses dramatically, then gestures wildly to the mangled box, “of the band candy.” “Oh, hell no.” Five cases, five crossovers.
1. The Time Shawn Inexplicably Wanted His M

For those of you who don't recognize it, this is a crossover with the Season Three ep of Buffy called "Band Candy." To summarize: For some reason, demons sell candy that reduces all the grownups to their irresponsible teenage forms. It wears off in a day or so, but until then, weirdness ensues.

Funnily enough, I was doing some research and it turns out that Sunnydale actually is Santa Barbara - in the name of poetic/storytelling license, it is now north-er. Ish.

_Chapter One_

_Or,_

_The Time Shawn Inexplicably Wanted His Mommy_

"Where did you get _that_?"

Gus stares at the huge box on the desk, while Shawn rummages through the drawer for scissors. It's easily the size of a speaker cabinet.

"My mother's cousin's best friend's… dog. Or something. Lives up north, somewhere sunny. Ah hah!" He produces the scissors with a flourish and goes to work hacking at the duct tape. "The point is, this is a time honored tradition, Gus! Remember that month in tenth grade, where I joined band–"

"Yes, Shawn." Gus crosses his arms and raises an eyebrow in what Shawn calls the 'Somewhere-and-Somehow-you-have-Pissed-Me-Off' pose. "You showed up to all of two practices, flirted with the drum major–"

"Hey. Katie Campbell made shakos hot."

"–_then,_ you made faces at me through the window during my audition. I got third chair, Shawn. I had to sit next to Luke Kleiner. Do you know how long I practiced those scales?"

"Yes, unfortunately, because when you started speaking to me again one week, two days, three hours and fourteen minutes later, that was all you talked about. But Gus! Let us not dwell on the past."

"Why not?" Shawn, as usual, ignores him.

"For it is a glorious time of year. The time," he pauses dramatically, then gestures wildly to the mangled box, "of the band candy."

"Oh, hell no."

"Gu-us! Don't be such a Negative Nancy. Come on, try some, it's really good."

"No, Shawn. I remember the last time you gave me one of these."

Shawn raises an eyebrow as he unwraps a chocolate bar. "In tenth grade?"

"They were drugged, Shawn! I went home and my mom grounded me for two weeks because she thought I'd been drinking!"

"Gus, Gus, you're remembering it all wrong. That wasn't the chocolate."

Gus blinks in spite of himself. "It wasn't?"

"No, of course not. I spiked your Pepsi."

Over the years, Gus has learned that most of the mishaps in his childhood were Shawn's fault, but he hasn't quite gotten around to expecting to blame him for the little things. He's also learned that he really, really should. "Shawn."

Shawn holds up a hand in restraint, and since he doesn't have a cast on Gus knows he has to wait for an opportunity to exact revenge. Shawn's a slippery bastard. "Now, wait, Gus, try it from my perspective. You were already a sophomore in high school and you hadn't so much as tried one of those chocolate liqueur things, I had to intervene. And – and remember? The weekend after you weren't grounded anymore you were so mad at your mom that you went to Cindy Neilson's party and got smashed, and then for a month after that everyone called you 'Bruce Lee' and I never told you why."

"The hangover lasted for two days, Shawn. Two days! I got a C on my chemistry test!"

"Oh, come on, the street cred was so worth it. Also, it's scary that you remember that."

"Why? You would."

"Yes, but I spent an entire childhood honing my gift in a misguided effort to please my father, while yours is just born of some deep seated desire to hold everything against me. Ooh! Phone call!"

Gus would so smack him except that his phone goes off too, and it's Jules, and she's talking too fast for everything to be entirely okay.

"That was Chief," Shawn says. Gus nods and grabs his keys.

"Jules, and she sounds worried. We should hurry."

"Gus, wait!"

He stops in the doorway as Shawn grabs five or six candybars and tosses him one.

"Some for the road?"

——

"Hey, Chief!"

Shawn tosses Vick a candy bar, which she catches on reflex. "Spencer. My office, now, and for heaven's sake keep your voice down."

"Don't sweat it, Chief, Lassie's out for lunch. We've got at least twenty minutes."

Gus looks around and, sure enough, it's just Juliet staring blankly at her computer screen. He follows Shawn into the office and closes the blinds while the Chief sits fidgeting behind her desk and taps a pencil against her hand.

"Mr. Spencer, as always, I demand your full discretion and yet do not actually expect it."

"Chief! I'm wounded. Why, we're as subtle as a Philip Pullman novel, aren't we Gus?" Gus nods vigorously in agreement. "What'cha need us for?"

The case is about one of the richer geezers in the neighborhood, a guy pushing late sixties, who has apparently gone certifiably whacko. "Witnesses say he broke into a car in broad daylight, apparently hotwired it in two minutes flat, and drove off towards the south end of town," Chief says, tossing the file over.

"What kind of car?"

"I'm sorry?"

Shawn puts his hand on the file and another to his head and made his 'concentrating' face. "I'm sensing… I'm sensing something sporty, something flashy, something nobody over the age of fifty-five could look at without getting a headache, let alone an urge to drive it."

That one's out of nowhere, even for Shawn, and Gus has picked up an observation skill or two from all the years they've spent together. He hasn't even cracked the file yet! Chief nods, though, with her look that says she's impressed but not enough to buy the psychic thing. "It was a brand new Jaguar XK convertible, bright red. Belonged to a trust fund kid eating lunch at a café across the street. He headed towards, oddly enough, his girlfriend's house, and when she called the cops he drove off towards Ossy Hill."

Shawn and Gus exchange quizzical looks, and it's Gus who asks the burning question. "Why would a sixty year old man head for the Santa Barbara equivalent of make out point?"

"We have no idea. Anyway, cops picked him up outside of town, brought him back to a holding cell, where…" she trails off and rubs her forehead, as if the next thought is too painful to finish. "…where he escaped."

"What?"

"He got out, somehow, we think he might've picked a lock, and anyway it's not like anyone was too concerned about him. He's got a pacemaker for Christ's sake! He's on the run, Lassiter is about to have an aneurysm, and I'm not exactly pleased either." She braces her hands on the desk and leans towards them. "If you can't find him, and bring him back _quietly_, the press is going to have a field day. This is the second escape in five months."

"Got it, Chief. We are so on top of it." Shawn grabs the file and salutes, then nods briskly to Gus and heads for the door.

"Oh, and Spencer."

"Hm?"

She unwraps the chocolate bar he gave her and breaks off a piece. "Thanks. And stay out of Lassiter's way."

——

"So, what've we got?"

"Alexander Turner, age sixty-seven, wife died twelve years ago of cancer and he's just started seeing someone new."

"How new we talking? Anna Nicole Smith?"

"Mmm, no, nice old lady by the name of Lily Rushgrout, lives up on the Hill. Apparently they met at the country club."

"It says that?"

"Well, no, but they're both members, so it stands to reason."

"What about his family?"

"A daughter and a son, both grown up and married, three grandkids between the two of them. Daughter, Judith, lives in Sunnydale, California, and the son's all the way off in Canada somewhere." Shawn stops dead in the middle of the parking lot and it's only years of practice that keep Gus from crashing into him. "Sunnydale, Sunnydale. I know that name."

"Isn't it a town a little ways up north?" Gus grabs a candy bar out of his pocket and nibbles pensively. "I've heard the name before, on the news or something, maybe? I know we ship a lot of pharmaceutical stuff that way, more than Santa Barbara and Ventura combined."

"This is weird."

"What?"

"I can't remember."

"It's not that weird–"

"No, really, I can't remember. Ask me how many hats are in the room."

"Shawn, we're in a parking lot."

"That shouldn't matter. Gus, something's not right, 'cause I haven't been this off since that time in 9th grade when I got pneumonia–"

"And you spent the next month and a half on antibiotics. I remember. You made me bring you toast."

"Gus, I was sick, and that's not the point. This, this isn't, this isn't cool. This is not cool. I wanna go home."

"What? Shawn,"

"Take me home, Gus, I want my mom."

"Your _mom_?" Somehow, the fact that his mom moved away and is now living in Florida fails to come up, but because Gus is indulgent if nothing else, he drives Shawn back to his apartment. Or, at least, he would have, if he hadn't been rear-ended by another car two blocks away. He gets out, feeling more self-righteously angry than usual, and wheels on the car behind him.

It's Lassiter.

"Hey, Lassy-face!" Shawn calls from the front seat. He doesn't get out but he sticks his hand out the window and waves. Lassiter leans against his car door and full-on _smirks_, in a way that's entirely different from his usual 'Now-I-get-to-put-You-in-Cuffs' expression. This is more of an 'I've-got-you-right-where-I-want-you' look that would be more at home on Shawn's face, if not for the underlying menace. Gus gulps.

"Spencer. Guster."

"You hit my car."

Gus is pretty sure he's in the right here, but lord knows they've given Lassiter enough reason to want to hit them and all things considered it's really not that bad compared to the glint in Lassie's eye and maybe he should just leave.

"Did I?"

"Um, yes?" Lassiter doesn't move, but Gus is now extremely aware of the man's gun holster. "You- you rear ended me. Hit my bumper, see? It's all – all dented."

Now Lassiter _is _moving, and Gus could not be more nervous. "You got any witnesses to that claim, Guster? Anybody willing to back you up?" He's advancing now, in an incredibly intimidating fashion that makes Gus happy that it's always Shawn who's the center of his ire, and is his hair actually _spiked?_

"No, no, that's cool, you just do your thing and we'll catch you later, say hi to Jules, have a, a… later."

He bolts. There's no way to glorify it; he locks the doors and they are gone. Shawn's too busy laughing to comment but the fact remains that _he_ didn't get out of the car.

He drops Shawn off at Henry's house (because, inexplicably, that was where Shawn demanded to go) and heads back to Psych. He has the sudden and unequivocal desire for a pineapple.

When he gets there, a redhead with dismay written across her face in capital letters is staring at the box on Shawn's desk. She jumps when the door slams behind him.

"Can I help you?"

"I, um, yes. I think so. These… these are yours?" She looks so earnest, so 'please don't kick me out' that Gus finds himself blushing like he hasn't since Fiona Lauper in the ninth grade.

"No, they're my partner's. Shawn. He got them from a friend. Do you want one?" _Does she want one? Nice, Guster, _he chides himself. She's looking at the box like it's going to explode; of course she doesn't want one.

"Oh, no, that's okay. Um. Do you mind if I take them? I'll pay you and all, it's just that these are, um, they're not good. For you. Cholesterol and all that."

Gus nods energetically and she looks confused. "Yes, you mind?"

"No! No, that's fine, go right ahead. Don't worry about the money or anything."

"Oh, okay, cool."

It's when he's helping her carry the box towards a van in the parking lot that he thinks to ask, "Wait, how bad for you are we talking?"

"Did you have one?" she asks, and gives him this look like he's suddenly making sense. Gus shifts his grip on the box, bewildered. "Ah. Well, don't worry about it, but you might want to go home. Watch some TV or something, maybe? Take the day off or whatever."

He's about five seconds away from asking her to join him when two things stop him. First, he's overtaken by a sudden and extreme nervousness, which is as effective as duct tape for shutting him up, and secondly, some subdued part of his brain manages to screech "high schooler!" to him through the fog. It turns out to be a good thing because the guy who opens the door to the van gives her a smile that he recognizes from the one and only time Shawn ever got serious about a girl. He puts the box in the back and waves as they drive away.

He's just dug out the pineapple from the fridge when he gets a call from Henry.

"Gus! What the hell is up with Shawn?"

"Sorry?"

"He's locked himself in his old room, he refuses to open the door, and unless I'm much mistaken that's "Remember the Time" he's got blasting on repeat which was a bad song in the first place. _Plus_, he is tying up my phone lines in what I'm fairly certain is a long-distance call to Florida. What in God's name is he on?"

Gus hangs up.

Two days later, Shawn calls him and they go for pineapple smoothies. Gus gets an anonymous check in the mail and uses it to fix his bumper, and the Chief has apparently taken a week-long leave of absence. When they try to find out why from Jules, they're promptly handed another case (a serial cat-burglar, which has Shawn making all sorts of Halle Berry jokes) and sent packing.

"Weird," Shawn says as she shoves them out the door. Gus decides not to comment.

Next Chapter: 'The Time Gus Wasn't The Only One Screaming Like A Little Girl'

No guarantees on the date, but I'll try to have it up within the month.

Anyway, reviews are greatly appreciated, unless you're going for the one-word "UPDATE" mandates that irk me so much. In that case, don't bother. Feedback (whether positive or negative) is always loved!


	2. The Time Shawn Spencer Held His Tongue

A/N: Okay, so, I was going to upload an SPN crossover next, but my computer crashed and took the first half of the story with it. I had this chapter all written up and just sitting here, though, so I just went with it.

Pre-series, no crossover to speak of, unless someone named Rhiannon Brandon is running around in a different fandom and I just don't know about it.

Disclaimer (crap, I've been out of the game for so long I'd forgotten about this): I own nothing except a broken computer and a piece of scratch paper with this story scribbled across it in illegible handwriting.

-

2. The Time Shawn Spencer Held His Tongue

-

Shawn has never been particularly ashamed of his lifestyle (he actually believes it gives him an air of mystery, like a gypsy or a blue-collar James Bond), but putting up with his dad's tirades are so not worth it. So, when he's between jobs and Gus is at college, he rooms with him for a couple weeks.

"Room" is, of course, a relative term. Shawn instantly makes friends wherever he goes, and college is no different – he ends up staying at Gus' place for five nights the whole visit. The rest is spent at parties, or in some rich chick's off-campus apartment; all of this is A-Okay with Gus.

There's this girl. Her name's Rhiannon Brandon, and if Shawn doesn't think much of her he keeps his mouth shut. She's fairly good-looking – hot, actually, but he restrains his adjectives for Gus' sake – but every time he cracks a joke she looks at him like he's grown an extra head. It happens so often that he considers naming it. He's stuck between "Little Shawn" and "Rambo," but when he asks Gus for his input, he receives a very detailed account of a party across campus and a no-so-subtle push towards the door. Shawn can take a hint.

Besides, Gus is infatuated with her. It doesn't take heightened observational skills or a fake psychic vision to see that, just like it doesn't take one to see that she's not nearly as into him. Shawn refrains from using the word "love" because he's been there once and, for Gus' sake, he hopes that's not what this is.

His worst fears are confirmed when he walks into Gus' dorm room a week later to find him sitting on the bed in his boxers, staring at the wall. Shawn takes one look at the envelope by the pillow – a credit card bill, how nice of the Gusters to forward it so quickly – and opens his mouth to say he doesn't _know_ what,

"Don't."

Shawn's mouth shuts with a click. They sit in silence for a whole ten minutes while Shawn gets a hold of himself and his sudden ire. Then, when he's certain nothing stupid is going to come out, he manages to talk Gus into some clothes, and into the car, and promptly drives them both to get pineapple smoothies and two boxes of Captain Delicious Fruity Puffs. They rent War of the Worlds – all of the manly, sci-fi terror, none of the sweaty apocalyptic romance – and when Gus pulls a tub of cookie dough ice cream out of the fridge Shawn makes no comment.

To this day, Shawn will swear up and down that someone must've gotten Gus' credit card info out of the trash, and that it was probably the shifty-eyed one across the hall with too much facial hair and no clear understanding of the words "hygiene." And if Rhiannon Brandon (now Rhiannon Faulkner), several years later, happens to schedule acupuncture appointments every first Saturday of the month at the clinic down by 44th Street, and if Shawn _happens_ to get an apprentice job at said acupuncture clinic, well. He can honestly say that her chi deserves it.


	3. The Time Shawn Met the Monster in the Cl

_A/N: _

_TA DA. Christ, this thing was a bitch to write. I kept getting inspiration, scribbling out huge chunks of it, and then my computer crashed and I lost my notebook and by the end, the entire story was scattered across four completely inaccessible locations. It took me a month to bring them all together._

_BUT._

_Here I am. Just for you. This is a crossover with possibly my favorite series of all time (it's on par with, if not slightly above, Psych), Supernatural. Oh man those boys are hot._

_-o-_

3. The Time Shawn Met the Monster in the Closet

_-o-_

Shawn's not nearly as big a wuss as people think he is. Yes, okay, he's got his moments of pure, unadulterated girlishness (and if you asked him, he'd blame it on Gus and say that twenty plus years of friendship tend to rub off on you), but when it really, really matters, he stays calm.

Unfortunately, twenty plus years of friendship tend to rub off on a person, so Gus knows that when Shawn is calm, it's never good. "Shawn," he hisses, and Shawn flinches at the sudden noise. "What is it? What do you see?"

Shawn holds a finger to his lips. When all is quiet except for this loud, wheezy grumble that's coming from whatever he's looking at (and when he's sure that the first thing out of his mouth isn't going to be an unmanly shriek of terror), he leans in and whispers, "Gus. Listen very carefully. We are going to back up, out of this tunnel, without making a sound. Then we are going to run. Got it?"

"Got it." Gus is freaking out, which is another reason that calm is Shawn's "oh shit" mode. It keeps them both sane.

They're about three quarters of the way out when the rock Gus is standing on _shifts_ (it goes one way while he goes the other), and the 'clunk' of his head on stone and the 'thud' of the rock toppling over echoes horribly back into the darkness. The Thing (and holy fuck if Shawn gets eaten by something he can't find a name for he will be so pissed) wakes up with a roar.

Gus is dazed and bleeding when Shawn grabs him by the arm. "Go!" he yells, pulling them towards the entrance. "Screw quiet, just run!"

That putrid smell is getting stronger. Gus isn't exactly running in a straight line, and the panting of the Thing gets louder with each thudded footfall. Shawn is trying incredibly hard not to think of the crime scenes he went to, how much blood there was, and he is most definitely _not_ thinking of that last one and where the limbs wound up in the end. Nor, for that matter, would he be screaming like a pre-teen girl in a horror movie if he wasn't so out of breath. That thing is fast but they've got a lead, and if they can just get to the car – Shit. Gus has the keys.

Shawn's trying to work out how to take the keys from his potentially concussed partner while maintaining a near sprint when he turns a corner and reaches the mouth of the tunnel. He pulls up short (Gus staggers beside him) and, after a moment, smiles.

He has never been happier to have two guns pointed at him in his life.

_-- Earlier that Day –_

Shawn doesn't get that many cases that stump him for this long. Oh, sometimes he'll have his upsets or moments of complete and utter wrongheadedness, but he _always_ figures it out and usually in time for some congratulatory Chinese food with Gus and Jules.

"Dude, it's like we're the Olsen twins!"

"The what?" Gus blinks up from his laptop long enough to give Shawn a highly skeptical look.

"Remember, that show they had after Full House but before they went all teenage and problematic?"

"No, Shawn. I never watched the Olsen twins."

"Yes you did, don't even try and pretend. There was that basset hound, and they were always home in time for dinner, and that weird theme song–"

"What, 'The Adventures of Mary-Kate and Ashley?'"

"That's it! Now, do you want to be Mary-Kate or Ashley, because honestly I don't think either of them would–"

"Shawn."

Shawn stops, mainly because Gus usually goes along with his pop culture analogies. It's like their thing. Plus, there's a note of genuine worry in with all the usual panic, and Shawn knows enough not to push it.

"Yeah?"

"This case."

The possible endings of this sentence play out in Shawn's head; _has gone from bad to worse, is getting too much to handle, is like an M. Night Shyamalan movie gone wrong, is beyond us. _Sometimes, as much as he loves Gus, he hates that they've known each other so long that unspoken things might as well be shouted from the rooftops. He pulls a face and momentarily presses a hand to his temple.

"Okay, recap."

Shawn whips out his handy dandy whiteboard – he finally got sick of squinting through the clear one and replaced it – and between the two of them, he and Gus map out everything they know.

"First victim – Valerie Hoang, age thirty-five. Single, lives in an apartment on 14th Street, was found five blocks away in a convenience store parking lot. Cause of death was massive blood loss trauma, which is a nice way of saying that something ripped her to itty bitty pieces."

Gus chips in, looking slightly green around the edges. "Autopsy report showed she had some organs missing, along with bits of her body that they just couldn't find, presumably removed, but the only marks found were consistent with either oversized bear claws or _very_ oddly shaped kitchen knives."

"We talked to the boss and the best friend, both said that she was nice, but shy, had no enemies whatsoever." Shawn runs a hand through his hair and stares at the woman's picture. "Nothing was taken, she didn't have a lot of money and it's all going to charity anyway – Gus, we have no motive. Anywhere."

"So maybe this was some kind of accident?"

Gus is skeptical of his own theory and he knows it. It's hard to _accidentally_ dismember someone. Shawn shakes his head and moves on to the next picture.

"Second victim, Kenny Beverly, age forty-seven, three days after the first. Recently divorced, has a girlfriend living on Catalina, because Kenny happens to be a fisherman who decided to spend the night on land before heading back out to sea. Was found outside his hotel, near the docks, again with the organs missing and the funky wounds. The weird thing is that when they found him, he was still bleeding – the time of death was set around a half an hour before, but nobody heard a thing."

Gus taps a picture of a grumpy looking lady staring morosely at the camera. "His ex-wife lives in New York with her sister and his daughter, and his girlfriend was in a dance class on Avalon. He was a bit rougher around the edges, maybe had a couple people he was unfriendly with, but his shipmates say there was nobody who disliked him _that_ much."

Shawn pauses long enough to raise an eyebrow. "Shipmates? Really, Gus?"

"Shut up, Shawn. What do you want me to call them? Comrades of the nautical persuasion?"

"Okay, first off, that is the weirdest phrase I've heard come out of your mouth since you tried to explain to me why Burning Man was a bad idea. Secondly, point taken. We move on."

"The third victim," Gus continued, shooting him a glare, "was the weirdest. Hands down."

"Tell me about it." Shawn chewed pensively on the marker. "Okay, so, romantic candlelight dinner on the rooftop, right? He's got his girlfriend up, probably a ring in his pocket… there's a setup like something out of Lady and the Tramp, minus the accordion, and she goes back down for wine – comes back and he's gone."

"Couldn't have been gone longer than five, _maybe_ ten minutes at the most."

"Depending on how lost she got." The crime scene photos plastered next to the picture of the smiling young couple don't exactly hint at a fairy tale ending. "Robbie Freidlander, age twenty-three, found on a roof two houses over without some major organs and with his skull crushed, post-mortem. Like something just picked him up and _tossed_ two hundred pounds of former linebacker."

"It's weird," Gus says quietly, which wins as understatement of the freaking decade. Shawn, for his part, gets more and more frustrated the longer he looks at it.

"It just doesn't add up!" Shawn sounds distressed, and the concentration on his face makes Gus' brain hurt. "It's not human, unless there's someone out there capable of biting through bone, but the closest animal would be a grizzly bear, and it's just _not_. Someone would've noticed that by now." He drops his hands and scowls furiously. "I've got nothing."

"Look, Shawn," Gus says, and he can tell that Shawn's not really listening but he continues anyway. "We know the when, the why and the how–"

"Not really," Shawn grumbles.

"—so how about we work on the where? There was that smell, remember, that really gross sort of sewage thing at all the crime scenes?"

"Oh, Gus, not with the Super Smeller again!" But then Shawn stops, actually _thinks_ about it for a second, and snaps his fingers. "The smell! Of course!"

Gus is smug now, but Shawn acts superior so often he really can't call him on it. "Remember when we were kids, and we'd go to Rocky Pines Park and there was that sewer tunnel? And nobody would ever play near it because it smelled so bad?"

"Gus!" Shawn's as excited as he's been in days. "Gus, you're a genius!"

"I knew I smelled it somewhere before!"

Shawn tweaks his partner's nose and congratulates it on a case somewhat solved.

"Hey," Gus says as they're headed out the door. "Do you ever notice how everything is named 'Pines' around here?"

Shawn pauses. "Mm. Nope."

_-o-_

"There's a _sasquatch_ in Santa Barbara?"

"Looks like."

"Shit, Sammy, do those even exist?"

"Well, Bobby says they spend most of their time in the mountains, eating whatever comes by, mostly deer and anything else they can get. Don't usually go for people so when they do, it's written off as a cougar."

"So what made this one come down from the treehouse?"

"Just a hunch, but they're building a resort in the Santa Ynez Mountains."

"Think Big Foot doesn't like the new neighbors?"

"Apparently."

"How do we kill it? I mean, it's a friggin' yeti, probably takes some sort of special treatment."

"It's pretty much just an oversized, slightly smarter than average gorilla."

"Yeah?"

"We shoot it, Dean."

"Excellent! I love it when you talk dirty."

_-o-_

"Well, there it is."

It's good to know that some things don't change, but staring at the giant sewer opening, Shawn takes a moment to really wish that this wasn't one of them. The smell is every bit as bad as he remembers."

"Explain to me again why we're here at 5:30 in the morning?" Gus growls sleepily, one hand over his nose.

"Because, Gus, we've determined that whatever it is, it comes out to play at night. Now is when it'll most likely be asleep." Shawn's whispering and he's not sure why, but the light peeking over the trees is getting stronger and he might not need his flashlight after all. He tucks it in his pocket just in case.

"Wait, what do you mean, 'it'?"

"Nothing, nothing, just follow me, okay?"

"Shawn, can we please call the police and just let them handle it? I want to go to bed and it _stinks_."

"What, and let them have all the fun? I have to at least find out if I'm right first. It'll be fun. Like an adventures."

Gus grabs his own flashlight out of the glove box and trails morosely after him. "I don't see why all of my adventures with you end in me taking an extra shower."

_-o-_

Which brings them to their current predicament, with Shawn staring down the barrels of matching sawed off shotguns. His relief lasts about a second before he's pulling Gus to the side and they're both ducking hurriedly behind a rock. A quick check of Gus' pupils shows they're normal – no concussion.

"Shawn, get off me! Why are we just lying here instead of, oh, running for our_ lives_?"

Shawn's practically sitting on top of him to keep him from doing just that. "No, no, Gus, listen. What's about to go down out there?"

"Yeah?"

"We're rooting for the home team."

They've got all of three seconds until, with a roar, the Thing rounds the corner and twin guns go off at once.

Shawn pokes his head around the rock and sees the tall one, bigass rifle still pointed directly at the prone Thing's head, move forward and nudge it with his boot. He waits a beat, then nods sharply to his companion and they both lower their guns. Shawn takes that as the "all clear" (though what the danger was, he honestly couldn't have said) and leaps up.

"So," he says, sauntering up to them and ignoring Gus, who has yet to recover basic motor function. He flashes them a smile and notes the way their grip shifts on their guns. "Um. Thanks. You know, for the lifesaving bit – guns are useful for that, probably." They seem shocked that he's coherent, which is completely fair. Gus is sort of lying behind a rock gibbering about the Henderson's and conspiracy theories, and Shawn gathers that this is the more typical reaction. "I'm Shawn Spencer, lead psychic for the SBPD." He takes advantage of their surprise and shakes their hands in turn.

The taller one – who, coincidentally, looks less likely to snap Shawn in half and gag him with a sock – stiffens. The funny thing is that they're not instantly skeptical, which is something Shawn's gotten used to, but then again. The Thing. Maybe clairvoyant isn't all that far out there.

"Psychic?" They exchange this hesitant look before Tall n' Sheepish puts on this self-conscious face and asks, "Look, this might be an awkward question but is – is your mom… okay? Alive, I mean?"

"My mom?" Shawn blinks, because for all that he's coping remarkably well with the dead Thing three feet away he just doesn't see this as a typical conversation starter. "Yeah, sure, she's retired and living in Louisiana, why?"

"No reason," he answers, smiling at him with this curious sense of relief. There's a beat of silence before Shawn nods to The Thing.

"So, is there a name for Big n' Ugly over here?"

"It's actually a yeti."

"No shit?"

_-o-_

They make awkward conversation for a minute until Gus pulls himself from behind his rock and joins them, and the fact that Shawn introduces him as "Gus" shows how rattled he really is. Tall n' Sheepish excuses himself to – _ew_ – burn the body; the amount of gas he uses gives Gus a new understanding of the oil crisis.

Leather Jacket is halfway through a speech he's clearly made a thousand times before (which essentially boils down to "yeah, monsters are real, please don't go crazy and keep the epiphanies to a minimum") when Shawn interrupts him.

"I know you."

Their two saviors exchange another look – panicked, this time, which Gus finds interesting because they just took down a _yeti_ without any apparent problems.

Shawn's looking more perplexed than he'll usually admit to and crosses his arms pensively. "Except, you're dead. Unless I've actually started talking to ghosts, someone somewhere is highly mistaken."

The shorter one steps in. "You must have us confused with somebody else, sorry. I'm Paul and this is my brother Jack. Covington." He offers a smile that's as fake as Tara Reid's boobs.

"Right." Shawn is highly unconvinced, and so is Gus. _Jefferson Airplane? Really? _he thinks as he mimics Shawn's pose. "So, you wouldn't be the Winchesters, then? Sam and Dean? I've got to say, you don't seem like the grave-desecrating, serial killer type, but if you are then that police sketch looks nothing like you."

The tall one (Sam?) turns remarkably pale for someone that tan and Dean's face might as well be made of stone for all the emotion he shows. Gus doesn't need heightened observational skills to know Shawn's right on target.

Movement across the street catches Shawn's attention. A garage door opens and a man stalks out, scowling furiously at the sleek Impala parked across his driveway. He pulls out a pen and angrily jots down the plates on the back of his hand – _uh oh, _Shawn thinks – before whipping out a cell phone and disappearing inside.

"You might want to move that car," Shawn tells them helpfully. They're moving before he's finished his sentence, and as they dismantle their weapons with a speed that Jules would envy, Gus pulls him aside.

"Shawn! Shouldn't you be calling the cops on them, instead of _helping_?"

"Gus, I read their file." Shawn notices Sam listening, but keeps talking anyway. "It doesn't make any sense! There's no consistent MO, the causes of death sound like something out of Alien v. Predator, and I don't care how shiny your car is, you can't make it from Maine to Arizona in under twelve hours, which, according to the police, they've managed twice. Dude," he whispers vehemently, "they've been framed!"

"And how do you know all this?" Gus demands. Shawn's look turns slightly guilty, or what guilty would look like on someone with no conscience.

"Lassie and Jules may have been in a meeting. And Lassie may have left his computer on. And I _may_ have seen them on the news that morning, and my last girlfriend may or may not have been into computers and _possibly _taught me a thing or two."

"Like _hacking_?"

But Shawn is off, calling after the departing Winchesters with an all-too-chipper "Hey, guys! Couple'a things." Gus scowls and watches the smoke billow out of the mouth of the cave and dissipate into the morning air. The revving of an engine pulls his attention away from the smell, of all things, in time to hear Shawn say, "Oh, and don't go east. Try west instead, I hear they've got some pretty cool islands out thataway."

The brothers Winchester nod simultaneously and Dean gives Gus a half wave before peeling out.

Gus, for his part, wants absolutely nothing more than to get out of that damn park by the time the Winchesters actually leave. Shawn apparently does not. He eyes the rising smoke for a moment, one hand over his nose, then turns to Gus.

"Dude. Maybe I should do the bounty hunter thing. I've got the name for it, although, admittedly, "Spencer" doesn't have the same Old West kickass ring to it as 'Winchester.'"

"Look on the bright side," Gus says, eyes watering. "At least your name isn't Shawn AK-47. What would your career options be then?"

"True. Let's bounce, partner, before this place starts smelling any worse."

"Deal."

They pass a squadcar on the way out and Gus privately vows to never go back to anywhere with the word "Pines" in the name again. It just never ends well.

_-o-_

"So, what's the deal with this psychic dude?"

"I don't know. I can't figure him out. You think he's for real?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I just don't, that's all."

"Come on, Dean, work with me here. Why not?"

"'Cause, Sam, I happen to know psychics. That shit's a curse, not a gift – comes with all sorts of baggage, and fucked-up ness, and he's one of the most disgustingly cheerful people I've ever seen. You know, I think he's actually older than me."

"So how the hell does he know all this stuff, Dean? He actually believed us, _before_ we saved him from a god-damned sasquatch. He came out of that tunnel like he was expecting us to be there!"

"I don't know. Maybe he is psychic or whatever, just happened to avoid all the crap that goes with it."

"Huh."

"So, whaddaya say, Sammy? Feel like a vacation?"

_-o-_

That day, Shawn goes to Jules. "I – I sense this, I sense it very strongly. The killer is dead." He looks at her, willing her to take his word on this. "Trust me, Jules, there'll be no more bodies."

She looks frustrated and he knows that she won't let it drop, not by a long shot. No decent cop would. "You can't give me more than that? A name, a face, somewhere to look, _anything_?"

There's indulging the psychic visions of a brilliant-yet-silly detective, and then there's finding out that Big Foot exists, along with all the monsters in all the closets ever. Jules isn't ready for that. Hell, Shawn isn't ready for that (and he's pretty sure that Gus is suffering from selective amnesia about the whole ordeal), so, no. He doesn't have anything.

Jules looks stricken, and Lassie and Chief both try to glare a vision out of him, but he stays quiet. In a few weeks Lassiter will chalk it up to a mountain lion and close the case, which will do absolutely nothing for him, Jules, or the victims' families, but what can Shawn do? In the meantime, he sits around and waits for the FBI to show up.

It takes them a day and a half, before some dude named Victor Henriksen comes storming in yelling about serial killers and license plates.

"He gives me the creeps," Gus says. They're standing by the pamphlet box in the corner, pretending to be interested in the one about teen pregnancy.

Shawn crumples it up petulantly. "If he tries to blame this one on them, I'll… uh." he stops, realizing that any sort of retaliation against an FBI officer would be incredibly stupid. Gus arches an eyebrow and flips through the booklet on drug abuse.

"You'll what, Shawn? Cow him with your frighteningly suggestive ellipses?" Shawn shoots him a dirty look.

"I'll kick him." Gus whacks him with "Crack Cocaine" and stalks off to the water cooler.

Henriksen does blame it on them, ultimately. For a while. It turns out that even the imaginative Agent H (as Shawn privately calls him) can't stretch the facts quite that far; freaks or no, Winchesters can't bite through bone. Shawn's debating whether or not to actually put his plan into action when Vicky (as Shawn also calls him, also privately) starts in on McNab, chews him out in a way that's even got Lassiter grinding his teeth. Buzz may not be the shiniest badge on the wall, but he does his job and he's one of the genuinely nicest guys Shawn has ever known. He's _Shawn's_ to hassle, or Lassiter's, but definitely not some FBI agent's, and this guy so deserves some retaliation.

So, when he sees Agent H stalking down the hall twenty minute's later, Shawn makes it his business to bump into him.

"Oh, I'm sorr – woah!" He clutches his forehead theatrically and staggers while Henriksen stares at him. "I'm seeing – a gun. Colt? No, buh… Browning? No, that's not it – Winchester!"

Henriksen looks like he can't decide whether to punch him in the face or just break both his legs, so Shawn continues before he figures it out. "I'm sensing movement, all over the place, different MO's? It doesn't add up, and there's a gazelle involved, ah, wait, that's not it – an Impala!"

A hand appears around his arm (and damn, this guy has the vice-like grip _down_) and Shawn takes that moment to snap out of his "trance." "Sorry," he gasps. "I just can't help it sometimes."

"You're the psychic." It isn't a question. "Where are they now?" Vicky demands, almost shaking him, and it takes an awful lot of willpower not to wince.

"They, they're gone," he answers, pressing two fingers to his temple. "Over the fields and through the woods, to… to _grandmother's_ house we go?"

Henriksen releases him and he staggers two feet to the left before collapsing prettily into a chair. Gus appears at his side and pretends to fan him with a pamphlet on STDs.

"How reliable is he?" Henriksen asks the Chief. Shawn hears the irritation in her voice as she answers, "I'll let his arrest record speak for itself."

"Shawn! Grandmother, really?"

"Gus, it's perfect. Their only living grandma is somewhere in Europe and Dean hasn't seen her since his mom's funeral, which was when he was, like, four."

"Should you be hindering a police investigation like this?"

"Dude, don't even worry about it. It's going to take him a whole two weeks to track her down, and at least another week to go through Interpol, maybe even longer if he keeps up his usual charm. Besides, he's kind of a jerk. I think I have a bruise."

Gus throws "Chlamydia" at his head while Shawn pouts at his bicep.

Five days later, he gets a postcard in the mail from the Channel Islands with the word "thanks" scrawled across the back. He tapes it to the wall next to his desk and never tells Gus why.

Two weeks after that, Chief Vick gets an enraged phone call from an FBI agent ("Huh," Shawn says, "that was fast.") and a blemish goes on his otherwise perfect record. He grins unrepentantly when she calls him on it and holds out a pineapple as a peace offering.

"Oops."


End file.
